Archive for February, 2017
i’ve been doing more shelving lately
even than usual… even unto moving
around actual shelves. whereupon,
strictly speaking, one is “decorating”
(rather than “shelving”, rightly so-
-called). but, then again. “all the
arts are one art”, as the saying goes
(or eventually will, if i get my way).
anyhow, here’s a shot about stuff about
the former “jugoslavia” (Југославија).
also some random furniture and whatnot.
you can see the mac whose built-in camera
took all three shots (in about the middle
of the mirror). here‘s a shot from
2010 with a different macbook & camera.
i don’t claim this for the best BLT i ever *ate*—
hell, i’ve only had one bite—but i *do* claim that
it’s the best one i’ve ever *made*.
great sandwiches begin with great bread.
grilled-pita BLT
ingredients:
madeline’s new flat-bread (12 hours old)
bacon
lettuce
tomato
mayo
*toast the bread & split the top & bottom.
(some of these formed “pockets” like pitas
rightly-so-called; some required encouragement
with a knife to “split” [as called for here];
that’s why i called ’em flatbreads not pitas.)
grill one side of one half in the bacon-pan.
assemble and serve.
(or, in the actual case, take one bite and
a photograph of… along with…)
chipped taters
ingredients:
baconfat, plenty of it
potato, one
premix “greek” seasoning
*peel the tater into wayhot pigfat; cook
until good & crunchy. (season to taste.)
“chip” the rest of the tater with the
potato-peeler *not* into the pan; when
the peels are done (and whatever other
events have transpired in the meanwhile
as the various bacon-pieces are worked
with), make sure the fat’s good & hot
again and dump in the lot. mess with
the whole big potato-puddle until a lot
of the chips are brown on both sides.
eat whatever gets burnt. serve.
(because violet blue red… but that’s
off-topic [and off-color]…)
three green-peppers; none of ’em green.
it’s even beautiful in its package and,
of course, even more so the more they’re
played with.
as shown here, the tops have been cut off
and served (with their middles cut out)
with ranch. the next thing that happened
was that a “ring” was cut off at the top
of each and the whole set got bagged and
put away.
the rings, in their turn, were opened up
into long slices and split down their
middles, the long way, with a steak knife.
finally (thus far), diced fine and stirred
into a chicken salad (along with some
carrots, also chopped fine, and, obviously,
some chicken—one big american breast).
add mayo to taste; mix; serve. (serving
suggestion: ritz crackers. we’ve got
lettuce & tomato, though, so actual sand-
wiches aren’t out of the question.)
the chili and cornbread are only a couple of hours old.
madeline made ’em and they were great (so far; it’ll
take a couple days to finish ’em). i boned the chicken
(after she baked it); there’s still a little left now.
beverage-committee stuff: fresh lemonade by me, as
usual. ice-tea by me, this time. OJ from concentrate.
milk in a squirt-bottle for coffee (on the door).
if i were even slightly less lazy i’d go back and get
a shot of just the cornbread. it’s done just right
and came out of the pan gorgeous. but maybe i’m not
as lazy as it might sound so far. most of whatever
*i* cook is single-serving size. today i made us
both some taters-and-toast (and mixed up the ‘nade
and the OJ). usually there’s a sandwich or two by
the end of the day, too.
i can be much more specific: quality
comes from caring. caring comes (alas),
from suffering. “art”, on this model,
then, is “turning suffering into beauty”.
exhibit A: any random guitar player.
i’ve met some amazing players in my time
and, like many another, i came up in an
a guitar-music-rich milieu. the “british
invasion” in pop-music, specifically.
john winston lennon… exhibit B… said
something to the effect “give me a *tuba*,
and i’ll make some music out of it”. now.
“john” … as much as anyone… was in a
position to know how much money-changes-
-everything. and *he* decided that baking
bread, one loaf at a time, for his loved
ones, was the best use of his time (if
only for a moment).
exhibit C: all my many-many exes (put together).
and the whole food-is-love *thing*. it’s not
that i’m not grateful. i get it that food is
*primal*. everybody has to eat and nobody knows
why we—as a species (or, for that matter, as a
“people”)—are so blessed. i also get it that
during the time i was coming up, not-having-a-dick
was a life-sentence. boys wore blue and girls wore
pink; bible-belt babies don’t have to think.
exhibit D: thirsty-two-million cooking shows. and
my own. shutting up for now; death to skynet.
(i don’t mean “squint”. fuck the robot-hegemony
generally. i await an editor that can actually
read. hello?)
domestic arts in the age of digital distribution. RIP, vlorblog. here are some posts mentioning “clean” and “dish”: https://vlorblog.wordpress.com/?s=clean+dish (courtesy of the “search” feature from that blog).
flicker daadd file and flicker more generally.
one can “download” a photo to the download-directory
of one’s nameless mac-book homebox to get a draggable
icon… as i’ve done in causing the ditko art to
appear below. i haven’t used this flicker account
in years. but if i don’t look at my own memorabilia
from time to time, who will. much of the photography
for the “cooking show” seems to’ve been processed through
flicker.
fresh bread by madeline; fresh ‘nade by me.
the ketchup bottles are routinely stripped
of their labels (when empty); you can see
a few of the labels over the sink. also
two of the bottles on the refrigerator door.
one of ’em now squirts milk (mostly into
[instant] coffee, but sometimes directly
into the cook’s tasting-apparatus).
here’s the bread file from the inaccessible-to-me
blog next door. while i’m at it, here’s one
for lemonade.
at least one stranger “liked” last week’s
hell hound on my trail, so here’s another
guitar-neck diagram in the same format.
this one’s in “open G” tuning: DGDGBD
(“dog dug bed”). in key-neutral notation
one has 0-5-12-17-21-24 (“half steps” above
the lowest note). (the thing to memorize
here is probably the gaps-between-strings:
5, 7; 5, 4, 3 [“twelve & twelve”; there are
(of course) 12 half-steps… guitar frets
or piano keys for example… in an “octave”];
in the same notation, the “open D” tuning
from the previous slide would be “7,5;4,3,5”.)
adding “7” (and reducing mod-12 again) gives us
7-0-7-0-4-7; the point of this admittedly rather
weird-looking move is that the “tonic note”
for the open chord (“G” in the dog-dug-bed
notation) is placed at the “zero” for the system.
(“open D” is 0-7-0-4-7-0 in this format; the
tonic note falls on the high and low strings.)
my source informs me that open-G tuning is also
known as “spanish” tuning; a little experience
shows me that it’s even more convenient for
noodling-about-on-three-strings. that is all.
here’s a diagram showing some of the notes for
a guitar tuned in “open D” tuning. i posted it
if f-book not long ago but of course one soon
loses all track of whatever is posted there.
three “inside strings” (the 3, 4, & 5; marked
here with a purple “{” [a “set-bracket” to me;
i’m given to understand that typographers call
it a “brace”])…
three “inside strings”, i say, can be played
as shown here to produce “the same” major chord
(the 0, 4, and 7 from a 12-note scale) in
three different “inversions” (namely, 7-0-4, 0-4-7,
and 4-7-0).
meanwhile, quasi-random bangings of the “outside”
strings—i like to use my thumb for these some-
times—particularly at frets 5, 7, & 12—will
blend in nicely and one needn’t worry much about
“muting” strings-not-played.
the livingston review 